Paths To Power

Elevation produces power positions on your map. The power position
must not be so strong that a player cannot be dislodged from it – there
should be several Paths to the power position, and each from a
significantly different angle to permit flanking. So long as the players
in the power position can be dislodged, camping in that position
shouldn’t be a significant problem. However, it would be better to give
them incentives to abandon the power position.

One form of incentive is a Pickup. If the Pickup is at the power
position, then the incentive shifts significantly to remaining at and
controlling the power position. But if the Pickup is down below, then
there is the incentive to abandon the high ground. However, if the
Pickup does not pose a serious threat to the player holding the high
ground, then he might remain and use the Pickup as bait.

Another motivation to jump down is the thrill of the kill – that is,
not allowing an adversary to escape; while the motivations to remain
above are either to maintain the safety that the position offers, or the
unwillingness to endure the effort to return to the top again.

To offer incentives to abandon the power position, the map must offer
Paths (generally beginning with jumping down to the lower level) that
allow for a quick engagement while his adversary is still vulnerable.
This implies that once engaged, the player below can quickly find cover
from above, but that the cover serves as a trap and doesn’t allow the
player to go any further. The player above can then come down and finish
off his adversary.

Not knowing if other enemies are nearby, the decision to jump down
could be the wrong decision. This means that it would help your map to
make it where he cannot determine on his own how close the other
adversaries may be. This promotes team work by forcing the player above
to rely upon team communication to make a more informed decision

Maintain Value

Power positions are valuable, so you don’t want to make them cheap. A
player must earn the position and must continue to earn it to keep it.
If a player jumps down, then they had to have had a good reason – there
was some incentive drawing them down. It doesn’t matter what that
incentive was, it had to be more valuable than the high ground because
he chose it over the high ground. So there needs to be a cost involved –
a penalty to pay.

To make the return back to the top instant via a teleport or a grav
lift, the player loses nothing but is merely inconvenienced that he had
to jump down at all. But by making the trek back to the top somewhat
cumbersome or time consuming you make him weigh his risks and penalties
to return first.[1]

This is not to say that a grav lift or teleport cannot be used to
move up to the high ground, but that it cannot be just a few steps from
where the player jumps down. If using grav lifts or teleport to the high
ground, make it time consuming to reach once down below.

On the one hand if you intentionally create a power position on your
map, you want to make it effective over a significant portion of your
map. You want it to provide sight lines to a substantial, if still a
minority aggregate of your map. Since we are talking about forging for
the playlists, it is unlikely that you want any one power position to be
able to influence most of the map. Power positions that dominate most
of the map are more descriptive of tournament style Arena maps than most
of the playlist maps.

When I say you want it to be effective, I mean you want a player at
the power position to influence movement at more than just a couple of
locations here and there. You want the player to be able to impact
overall Game Play by significantly retarding the movements of the other
team.

Summary

Elevated positions typically are powerful and you generally want
several opposing ingress Paths to it so that it cannot be too powerful
where the player cannot be dislodged from it.

Offering incentives to come down from an elevated position can make a
map more interesting, because the player holding the position can be
torn in deciding what to do.

Don’t make power positions cheap, but make a player work to return to the power position if they abandon it.

While a power position should never dominate the entire map, it
should have a greater than average influence over the movement of
adversaries.